Choosing Beauty From Ashes

Pain can drive you into isolation from the world around you even as you walk around in it.  Sometimes the tears that don't show sting more than those that do.  Sometimes deep sadness is enough to make a person feel trapped in the middle of an open field.  Throbbing like an omnipresent heartbeat, it pounds out the bass of the incorrigible soundtrack of your life that no one else can hear.

But pain doesn't have to happen in the absence of happiness.

What?

How does that make sense?

How is that even possible?

It's possible because to accept distress with open arms rather than trying to hide from it is a decision we're inherently capable of making.

We can learn to welcome the pain because it tears us down in a way that builds us up.

Really?  You ask.  Yes, really.  I've done it.

Think about the difference between an athlete and a slave laborer.  Both roles require incredible amounts of exertion for extended periods of time, but the one is incredibly more pleasant than the other. Why is that?

The difference is the free, conscious goal of the athlete.  If our goals are powerful enough, they can motivate us to own our pain rather than shying away from it.  In that moment the ache loses its grip on us and begins to die.  An athlete is so driven by their goals that they willingly accept the pain of the moment in order to achieve what they set out to do.  We can't always control the pain we experience due to the unfortunate circumstances of our lives.  But we can choose to accept that pain in such a way that its negative effect on us loses its power.

It starts by choosing to bend with discomfort rather than to push ourselves against it until we break.  We have every reason to fight it, inside ourselves if nowhere else, but when we choose to give those reasons up, the potency of the ache ebbs and finally begins to fade.

 Only then can we let it go and fully live in the present instead of chaining ourselves interminably to the past.

There are people in the present who need us, who need us to actively choose the pain that's been thrust on us so that so we can step out of it and finally be in a place where we're able to help them.  Each one of them is a reason to choose to bend when the whole world is telling us to fight back and break.

They are the reasons to cup our tears in our hands and stare at them.  Look them in the eye.  And then make the conscious decisions to accept them, letting them drip through our fingers.

What's your reason?

Another reason to accept pain is so that we can fully thrive in the moment.  If we let them, the hard experiences of the past will boost us upward farther than we ever thought possible.

Of this very subject the Bible says, "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:" (1 Peter 1:7)

Not only are trials survivable, they are actually precious.  More precious, in fact than even our physical possessions.  This I know from personal experience.  The moments when I've suffered and fully accepted the suffering are without reservation the most valuable things I own.  One might argue that faith in God is of greater worth.  I would fire back that my personal experiences with pain are my faith in God.  Scarred hands and feet that are healed are often more beautiful than before they were pierced.

That doesn't mean they should have been pierced.

That doesn't mean it was fair.

That doesn't mean it didn't mess up quite a few things.

But that doesn't mean that that can't, in the end, be a good thing.

While I've never experienced anything that could be labeled as trauma by any stretch of the imagination, I am grateful for pain that clings to me for years on end and for the realization that it is time to bend, let it fade, and step into the future.

Will you come with me?

Friends, I would have stopped you from being hurt if I could have.  But as that is no longer an option, I will gladly walk with you as we all cradle wounds no one else can see until the day comes when we decide that we're ready to stop letting those things control our lives and find a reason powerful enough to value them for what they really are.  Maybe then we will realize that navigating life with things that stings inside isn't such a bad thing.

If you still need reassurance, take heart from these lines from the Half-Blood Prince:

 “It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew - and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world.”

That is our choice.  So let's make it.

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Wonderlane, "Story of the Fun Blessing on the Road to Darjeeling, India (Orange, black, and white butterflies, North of Ft. Bragg, California, USA)" https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode Maltz Evans, "Are You One in the Stream of the Holy Spirit," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode  Ricardo Liberato "Freedom" https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode